How Dianne Feinstein helped the 49ers make ‘The Catch’ happen

Dianne Feinstein’s legacy as a San Francisco titan was, to some extent, bolstered by the San Francisco 49ers’ 1980s dynasty.

In an interview published January 2022 with Jackson Michael’s “The Game Before the Money” podcast, which looks back at the history of football, NFL groundskeeper George Toma said that Feinstein, then mayor of San Francisco, had a direct hand in making sure that Candlestick Park’s football field was ready for the 1981 NFC title game against the hated Dallas Cowboys.

“She was down there, with mud up to her boots and everything,” Toma said. “It rained every day, she’d be down on that field with her raincoat, her rain hat and boots, trying to help us.”

In the week entering that season’s NFC title game, San Francisco had its worst rainstorm in 50 years. The numbers, according to the San Francisco Chronicle, were staggering: more than 6 inches of rain in most regions, 29 deaths, “nearly $300 million in property damage” and just the third-ever shutdown of the Golden Gate Bridge. (The Chronicle and SFGATE are both owned by Hearst but have separate newsrooms.)

Candlestick Park’s football field already had the derogatory nickname of “The Quaqmire” because of how poorly it was maintained over the years. After the week of rain, the field was in no condition to host the massive showdown with Dallas.

The 49ers requested that Toma — who has been the NFL’s groundskeeper for every Super Bowl — come in and try and help the Candlestick grounds crew in the middle of the season. Issues arose even before the rain, which the Washington Post reported could be at least partially attributed to Candlestick’s shared tenancy between the 49ers and the San Francisco Giants and also because Candlestick hosted two Rolling Stones concerts on Oct. 17 and 18 in the middle of the NFL season.

Toma called Candlestick a “mud hole” in his conversation with Michael and admitted he and the San Francisco Recreation and Parks department couldn’t do much because the roots of the grass were too short, allowing the field to get easily and thoroughly waterlogged. But he said one person was coming by every day, trying to help fix things: Feinstein.

“By the end of the 1981 regular season the field was a mess,” Feinstein said in a statement her office emailed to Michael for the podcast. “I told the Parks Department the grounds crew had to get it right for this biggest of playoff games.”

The solution that Toma and SF Rec and Parks came up with: ripping up the sod from Kezar Stadium, the 49ers’ original home in Golden Gate Park, and moving it southeast to Candlestick.

It was certainly unconventional, and the fix is noticeable if you look back at game footage. The next time you pull up a highlight of “The Catch,” don’t just watch Joe Montana roll to his right, searching for Dwight Clark. Take a look at the grass underneath his feet.

By the time Montana pump-fakes and makes the throw over Ed “Too Tall” Jones, he’s on a visibly lighter and likely smoother cut of grass. His throw off of his back foot happens cleanly, without slipping on what could have been a horrendous sod.

“Mayor Dianne Feinstein and Barney Barron, the head of the San Francisco Parks and Recreation department, thinking and getting together to take the old sod out, and we did that and put it in and everything went great,” Toma said on Michael’s podcast. “Don’t give me the credit, give the credit to the people that made it happen.”